What is Truth?

Truth is the Voice of Nature and of Time - Truth is the startling monitor within us -
Naught is without it, it comes from the stars,
The golden sun, and every breeze that blows. ...

Wm. THOMPSON BACON.
[Thoughts in Solitude.]

"Fair Truth's immortal sun
Is sometimes hid in clouds; not that her light
Is in itself defective, but obscured
By my weak prejudice, imperfect Faith
And all the thousand causes which obstruct
The growth of goodness."

HANNAH MORE.
[Daniel: A Sacred Drama,
Part 11, 98-103.]

"What is Truth?" asked Pilate of one who, if the claims of the
Christian Church are even approximately correct, must have known
it. But He kept silent. And the truth which He did not divulge,
remained unrevealed, for his later followers as much as for the
Roman Governor. The silence of Jesus, however, on this and other
occasions, does not prevent his present followers from acting as
though they had received the ultimate and absolute Truth itself; and
from ignoring the fact that only such Words of Wisdom had been given
to them as contained a share of the truth, itself concealed in
parables and dark, though beautiful, sayings.

[Jesus says to the "Twelve" -- "Unto you is given the
mystery of the Kingdom of God; but unto them that are without,
all things are done in parables," etc. (Mark iv. II.)]

This policy led gradually to dogmatism and assertion. Dogmatism in
churches, dogmatism in science, dogmatism everywhere. The possible
truths, hazily perceived in the world of abstraction, like those
inferred from observation and experiment in the world of matter, are
forced upon the profane multitudes, too busy to think for
themselves, under the form of Divine revelation and
Scientific authority. But the same question stands open
from the days of Socrates and Pilate down to our own age of
wholesale negation: is there such a thing as absolute
truth in the hands of any one party or man? Reason answers,
"there cannot be." There is no room for absolute truth upon any
subject whatsoever, in a world as finite and conditioned as man is
himself. But there are relative truths, and we have to make the
best we can of them.

In every age there have been Sages who had mastered the absolute and
yet could teach but relative truths. For none yet, born of mortal
woman in our race, has, or could have given out, the whole
and the final truth to another man, for every one of us has to find
that (to him) final knowledge in himself. As no two minds
can be absolutely alike, each has to receive the supreme
illumination through itself, according to its capacity, and
from no human light.

The greatest adept living can reveal of the Universal Truth only
so much as the mind he is impressing it upon can assimilate, and
no more. Tot homines, quot sententiae - is an immortal
truism. The sun is one, but its beams are numberless; and the
effects produced are beneficent or maleficent, according to the
nature and constitution of the objects they shine upon. Polarity
is universal, but the polariser lies in our own consciousness. In
proportion as our consciousness is elevated towards absolute
truth, so do we men assimilate it more or less absolutely. But
man's consciousness again, is only the sunflower of the earth.
Longing for the warm ray, the plant can only turn to the sun, and
move round and round in following the course of the unreachable
luminary: its roots keep it fast to the soil, and half its life
is passed in the shadow ....

Still each of us can relatively reach the Sun of Truth even on this
earth, and assimilate its warmest and most direct rays, however
differentiated they may become after their long journey through
the physical particles in space. To achieve this, there are two
methods. On the physical plane we may use our mental polariscope;
and, analyzing the properties of each ray, choose the purest. On
the plane of spirituality, to reach the Sun of Truth we must work
in dead earnest for the development of our higher nature. We know
that by paralyzing gradually within ourselves the appetites of the
lower personality, and thereby deadening the voice of the purely
physiological mind - that mind which depends upon, and is
inseparable from, its medium or vehicle, the organic
brain - the animal man in us may make room for the spiritual; and
once aroused from its latent state, the highest spiritual senses
and perceptions grow in us in proportion, and develop pari
passu with the "divine man." This is what the great adepts,
the Yogis in the East and the Mystics in the West, have always
done and are still doing.

But we also know, that with a few exceptions, no man of the world,
no materialist, will ever believe in the existence of such adepts,
or even in the possibility of such a spiritual or psychic
development. "The (ancient) fool hath said in his heart, There is
no God"; the modern says, "There are no adepts on earth, they are
figments of your diseased fancy." Knowing this we hasten to
reassure our readers of the Thomas Didymus type. We beg them to
turn in this magazine to reading more congenial to them; say to the
miscellaneous papers on Hylo-Idealism, by various writers.

E.g., to the article "Autocentricism" - on the same "philosophy,"
or again, to the apex of the Hylo-Idealist pyramid in this Number.
It is a letter of protest by the learned Founder of the School in
question, against a mistake of ours. He complains of our
"coupling" his name with those of Mr. Herbert Spencer, Darwin,
Huxley, and others, on the question of atheism and materialism, as
the said lights in the psychological and physical sciences are
considered by Dr. Lewins too flickering, too "compromising" and
weak, to deserve the honourable appellation of Atheists or even
Agnostics. See "Correspondence" in Double Column, and the reply by
"The Adversary."

For Lucifer tries to satisfy its readers of whatever "school of
thought," and shows itself equally impartial to Theist and Atheist,
Mystic and Agnostic, Christian and Gentile. Such articles as our
editorials, the Comments on Light on the Path, etc.,
etc.- are not intended for Materialists. They are addressed to
Theosophists, or readers who know in their hearts that Masters of
Wisdom do exist: and, though absolute truth is
not on earth and has to be searched for in higher regions, that
there still are, even on this silly, ever-whirling little globe of
ours, some things that are not even dreamt of in Western
philosophy.

To return to our subject. It thus follows that, though "general
abstract truth is the most precious of all blessings" for
many of us, as it was for Rousseau, we have, meanwhile, to be
satisfied with relative truths. In sober fact, we are a poor set
of mortals at best, ever in dread before the face of even a
relative truth, lest it should devour ourselves and our petty
little preconceptions along with us.

As for an absolute truth, most of us are as incapable of seeing it
as of reaching the moon on a bicycle. Firstly, because absolute
truth is as immovable as the mountain of Mohammed [Mahomet], which
refused to disturb itself for the prophet, so that he had to go to
it himself. And we have to follow his example if we would approach
it even at a distance. Secondly, because the kingdom of absolute
truth is not of this world, while we are too much of it. And
thirdly, because notwithstanding that in the poet's fancy man is -

........ the abstract
Of all perfection, which the workmanship
Of heaven hath modelled ........

In reality he is a sorry bundle of anomalies and paradoxes, an
empty wind bag inflated with his own importance, with
contradictory and easily influenced opinions. He is at once an
arrogant and a weak creature, which, though in constant dread of
some authority, terrestrial or celestial, will yet -

........ like an angry ape,
Play such fantastic tricks before high Heaven
As make the angels weep."

[Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act 2, scene 2.]

Now, since truth is a multifaced jewel, the facets of which it is
impossible to perceive all at once; and since, again, no two men,
however anxious to discern truth, can see even one of those facets
alike, what can be done to help them to perceive it? As physical
man, limited and trammelled from every side by illusions, cannot
reach truth by the light of his terrestrial perceptions, we say -
develop in you the inner knowledge. From the time when the
Delphic oracle said to the enquirer "Man, know thyself," no greater
or more important truth was ever taught. Without such perception,
man will remain ever blind to even many a relative, let alone
absolute, truth.

Man has to know himself, i.e., acquire the inner
perceptions which never deceive, before he can master any absolute
truth. Absolute truth is the symbol of Eternity, and no
finite mind can ever grasp the eternal, hence, no truth in
its fulness can ever dawn upon it. To reach the state during which
man sees and senses it, we have to paralyze the senses of the
external man of clay. This is a difficult task, we may be told, and
most people will, at this rate, prefer to remain satisfied with
relative truths, no doubt.

But to approach even terrestrial truths requires, first of all,
love of truth for its own sake, for otherwise no
recognition of it will follow. And who loves truth in this age for
its own sake? How many of us are prepared to search for, accept,
and carry it out, in the midst of a society in which anything that
would achieve success has to be built on appearances, not on
reality, on self-assertion, not on intrinsic value? We are
fully aware of the difficulties in the way of receiving truth. The
fair heavenly maiden descends only on a (to her) congenial soil -
the soil of an impartial, unprejudiced mind, illuminated by pure
Spiritual Consciousness; and both are truly rare dwellers in
civilized lands. In our century of steam and electricity, when man
lives at a maddening speed that leaves him barely time for
reflection, he allows himself usually to be drifted down from cradle
to grave, nailed to the Procrustean bed of custom and
conventionality.

Now conventionality - pure and simple - is a congenital LIE, as it
is in every case a "simulation of feelings according to a
received standard" (F. W. Robertson's definition); and where there
is any simulation there cannot be any truth. How profound
the remark made by Byron, that "truth is a gem that is found at a
great depth; whilst on the surface of this world all things are
weighed by the false scales of custom," is best known to
those who are forced to live in the stifling atmosphere of such
social conventionalism, and who, even when willing and anxious to
learn, dare not accept the truths they long for, for fear of the
ferocious Moloch called Society.

Look around you, reader; study the accounts given by world-knowing
travellers, recall the joint observations of literary thinkers, the
data of science and of statistics. Draw the picture of modern
society, of modern politics, of modern religion and modern life in
general before your mind's eye. Remember the ways and customs of
every cultured race and nation under the sun. Observe the doings
and the moral attitude of people in the civilized centres of Europe,
America, and even of the far East and the colonies, everywhere where
the white man has carried the "benefits" of so-called civilization.
-

And now, having passed in review all this, pause and reflect, and
then name, if you can, that blessed Eldorado, that
exceptional spot on the globe, where TRUTH is the honoured guest,
and LIE and SHAM the ostracised outcasts? You CANNOT. Nor can any
one else, unless he is prepared and determined to add his mite to
the mass of falsehood that reigns supreme in every department of
national and social life.

"Truth!" cried Carlyle, "truth, though the heavens crush me for
following her, no falsehood, though a whole celestial Lubber land
were the prize of Apostasy." Noble words, these. But how many
think, and how many will dare to speak as Carlyle did, in our
nineteenth century day? Does not the gigantic appalling majority
prefer to a man the "paradise of Do-nothings," the pays de
Cocagne of heartless selfishness? It is this majority that
recoils terror-stricken before the most shadowy outline of every
new and unpopular truth, out of mere cowardly fear, lest Mrs.
Harris should denounce, and Mrs. Grundy condemn, its converts to
the torture of being rent piecemeal by her murderous tongue.

SELFISHNESS, the first-born of Ignorance, and the fruit of the
teaching which asserts that for every newly-born infant a new soul,
separate and distinct from the Universal Soul, is "created"
- this Selfishness is the impassable wall between the
personal Self and Truth. It is the prolific mother of all
human vices, Lie being born out of the necessity for
dissembling, and Hypocrisy out of the desire to mask Lie.
It is the fungus growing and strengthening with age in every human
heart in which it has devoured all better feelings. Selfishness
kills every noble impulse in our natures, and is the one deity,
fearing no faithlessness or desertion from its votaries. Hence, we
see it reign supreme in the world and in so-called fashionable
society. As a result, we live, and move, and have our being in this
god of darkness under his trinitarian aspect of Sham, Humbug, and
Falsehood, called RESPECTABILITY.

Is this Truth and Fact, or is it slander? Turn whichever way you
will, and you find, from the top of the social ladder to the bottom,
deceit and hypocrisy at work for dear Self's sake, in every nation
as in every individual. But nations, by tacit agreement, have
decided that selfish motives in politics shall be called "noble
national aspiration, patriotism," etc.; and the citizen views it in
his family circle as "domestic virtue." Nevertheless, Selfishness,
whether it breeds desire for aggrandizement of territory, or
competition in commerce at the expense of one's neighbour, can never
be regarded as a virtue. We see smooth-tongued DECEIT and BRUTE
FORCE - the Jachin and Boaz (2Ch 3:17) of every
International Temple of Solomon - called Diplomacy, and we call it
by its right name. Because the diplomat bows low before these two
pillars of national glory and politics, and puts their masonic
symbolism "in [cunning] strength shall this my house be established"
into daily practice; i.e., gets by deceit what he cannot
obtain by force - shall we applaud him? A diplomat's qualification
- "dexterity or skill in securing advantages" - for one's own
country at the expense of other countries, can hardly be achieved by
speaking truth, but verily by a wily and deceitful tongue; and,
therefore, Lucifer calls such action - a living, and an evident LIE.

But it is not in politics alone that custom and selfishness have
agreed to call deceit and lie virtue, and to reward him who lies
best with public statues. Every class of society lives on LIE, and
would fall to pieces without it. Cultured, God-and-law-fearing
aristocracy, being as fond of the forbidden fruit as any plebeian, is
forced to lie from morn to noon in order to cover what it is pleased
to term its "little peccadillos," but which TRUTH regards as gross
immorality. Society of the middle classes is honey-combed with
false smiles, false talk, and mutual treachery. For the majority
religion has become a thin tinsel veil thrown over the corpse of
spiritual faith. The master goes to church to deceive his servants;
the starving curate - preaching what he has ceased to believe in -
hoodwinks his bishop; the bishop - his God. Dailies, political and
social, might adopt with advantage for their motto Georges Dandin's
immortal query -"Lequel de nous deux trompe-t-on ici?" -
Even Science, once the anchor of the salvation of Truth, has ceased
to be the temple of naked Fact. Almost to a man the Scientists
strive now only to force upon their colleagues and the public the
acceptance of some personal hobby, of some new-fangled theory, which
will shed lustre on their name and fame. A Scientist is as ready to
suppress damaging evidence against a current scientific hypothesis
in our times, as a missionary in heathen-land, or a preacher at
home, to persuade his congregation that modern geology is a lie, and
evolution but vanity and vexation of spirit.

[Georges Dandin - Principal character in Moliere's comedy by that
name; it is in three acts, written in prose, and was first performed
on the 19th of July, 1660.- Compiler.]

Such is the actual state of things in 1888 A.D. and yet we are
taken to task by certain papers for seeing this year in more than
gloomy colours!

Lie has spread to such extent - supported as it is by custom and
conventionalities - that even chronology forces people to lie. The
suffixes A.D. and B.C. used after the dates of the year by Jew and
Heathen, in European and even Asiatic lands, by the Materialist and
the Agnostic as much as by the Christian, at home, are - a
lie used to sanction another LIE.

Where then is even relative truth to be found? If, so far back as
the century of Democritus, she appeared to him under the form of a
goddess lying at the very bottom of a well, so deep that it gave but
little hope for her release; under the present circumstances we have
a certain right to believe her hidden, at least, as far off as the
ever invisible dark side of the moon. This is why,
perhaps, all the votaries of hidden truths are forthwith set down as
lunatics. However it may be, in no case and under no threat shall
Lucifer be ever forced into pandering to any universally and tacitly
recognised, and as universally practised lie, but will hold to fact,
pure and simple, trying to proclaim truth whensoever found, and
under no cowardly mask.

Bigotry and intolerance may be regarded as orthodox and sound
policy, and the encouraging of social prejudices and personal
hobbies at the cost of truth, as a wise course to pursue in order to
secure success for a publication. Let it be so. The Editors of
Lucifer are Theosophists, and their motto is chosen: Vera pro
gratiis.

They are quite aware that Lucifer's libations and
sacrifices to the goddess Truth do not send a sweet savoury smoke
into the noses of the lords of the press, nor does the bright "Son
of the Morning" smell sweet in their nostrils. He is ignored when
not abused as - veritas odium paret. Even his friends are
beginning to find fault with him. They cannot see why it should
not be a purely Theosophical magazine, in other words, why it
refuses to be dogmatic and bigoted. Instead of devoting every inch
of space to theosophical and occult teachings, it opens its pages
"to the publication of the most grotesquely heterogeneous elements
and conflicting doctrines." This is the chief accusation, to which
we answer - why not? Theosophy is divine knowledge, and knowledge
is truth; every true fact, every sincere word are thus part
and parcel of Theosophy. One who is skilled in divine alchemy, or
even approximately blessed with the gift of the perception of truth,
will find and extract it from an erroneous as much as from a correct
statement. However small the particle of gold lost in a ton of
rubbish, it is the noble metal still, and worthy of being dug out
even at the price of some extra trouble.

As has been said, it is often as useful to know what a thing is
not, as to learn what it is. The average reader can
hardly hope to find any fact in a sectarian publication under all
its aspects, pro and con, for either one way or
the other its presentation is sure to be biassed, and the scales
helped to incline to that side to which its editor's special policy
is directed.

A Theosophical magazine is thus, perhaps, the only publication where
one may hope to find, at any rate, the unbiassed, if still only
approximate truth and fact. Naked truth is reflected in Lucifer
under its many aspects, for no philosophical or religious views are
excluded from its pages. And, as every philosophy and religion,
however incomplete, unsatisfactory, and even foolish some may be
occasionally, must be based on a truth and fact of some kind, the
reader has thus the opportunity of comparing, analyzing, and
choosing from the several philosophies discussed therein. Lucifer
offers as many facets of the One universal jewel as its limited
space will permit, and says to its readers: "Choose you this day
whom ye will serve: whether the gods that were on the other side of
the flood which submerged man's reasoning powers and divine
knowledge, or the gods of the Amorites of custom and social
falsehood, or again, the Lord of (the highest) Self - the bright
destroyer of the dark power of illusion?" Surely it is that
philosophy that tends to diminish, instead of adding to, the sum of
human misery, which is the best.

At all events, the choice is there, and for this purpose only have
we opened our pages to every kind of contributor. Therefore do you
find in them the views of a Christian clergyman who believes in his
God and Christ, but rejects the wicked interpretations and the
enforced dogmas of his ambitious proud Church, along with the
doctrines of the Hylo-Idealist, who denies God, soul, and
immortality, and believes in nought save himself. The rankest
Materialists will find hospitality in our jourmal; aye, even those
who have not scrupled to fill pages of it with sneers and personal
remarks upon ourselves, and abuse of the doctrines of Theosophy, so
dear to us. When a journal of free thought, conducted by an
Atheist, inserts an article by a Mystic or Theosophist in praise of
his occult views and the mystery of Parabrahman, and passes on it
only a few casual remarks, then shall we say Lucifer has found a
rival. When a Christian periodical or missionary organ accepts an
article from the pen of a free-thinker deriding belief in Adam and
his rib, and passes criticism on Christianity - its editor's faith -
in meek silence, then it will have become worthy of Lucifer, and may
be said truly to have reached that degree of tolerance when it may
be placed on a level with any Theosophical publication.

But so long as none of these organs do something of the kind,
they are all sectarian, bigoted, intolerant, and can never have an
idea of truth and justice. They may throw innuendoes against
Lucifer and its editors, they cannot affect either. In fact, the
editors of that magazine feel proud of such criticism and
accusations, as they are witnesses to the absolute absence of
bigotry, or arrogance of any kind in theosophy, the result of the
divine beauty of the doctrines it preaches. For, as said, Theosophy
allows a hearing and a fair chance to all - it deems no views - if
sincere - entirely destitute of truth. It respects thinking men, to
whatever class of thought they may belong. Ever ready to oppose
ideas and views which can only create confusion without benefiting
philosophy, it leaves their expounders personally to believe in
whatever they please, and does justice to their ideas when they are
good. Indeed, the conclusions or deductions of a philosophic writer
may be entirely opposed to our views and the teachings we expound;
yet his premises and statements of facts may be quite correct, and
other people may profit by the adverse philosophy, even if we
ourselves reject it, believing we have something higher and still
nearer to the truth. In any case, our profession of faith is now
made plain, and all that is said in the foregoing pages both
justifies and explains our editorial policy.

To sum up the idea, with regard to absolute and relative truth, we
can only repeat what we said before. Outside a certain highly
spiritual and elevated state of mind, during which Man is at one
with the UNIVERSAL MIND - he can get nought on earth but
relative truth, or truths, from whatsoever philosophy or
religion. Were even the goddess who dwells at the bottom of
the well to issue from her place of confinement, she could give man
no more than he can assimilate. Meanwhile, every one can sit near
that well - the name of which is KNOWLEDGE - and gaze into its
depths in the hope of seeing Truth's fair image reflected, at least,
on the dark waters. This, however, as remarked by Richter, presents
a certain danger. Some truth, to be sure, may be occasionally
reflected as in a mirror on the spot we gaze upon, and thus reward
the patient student. But, adds the German thinker, "I have heard
that some philosophers in seeking for Truth, to pay homage to her,
have seen their own image in the water and adored it instead". ....

It is to avoid such a calamity - one that has befallen every
founder of a religious or philosophical school - that the editors
are studiously careful not to offer the reader only those truths
which they find reflected in their own personal brains. They offer
the public a wide choice, and refuse to show bigotry and
intolerance, which are the chief landmarks on the path of
Sectarianism. But, while leaving the widest margin possible for
comparison, our opponents cannot hope to find their faces
reflected on the clear waters of our Lucifer, without remarks or
just criticism upon the most prominent features thereof, if in
contrast with theosophical views.

This, however, only within the cover of the public magazine, and
so far as regards the merely intellectual aspect of philosophical
truths. Concerning the deeper spiritual, and one may almost say
religious, beliefs, no true Theosophist ought to degrade these by
subjecting them to public discussion, but ought rather to treasure
and hide them deep within the sanctuary of his innermost soul.
Such beliefs and doctrines should never be rashly given out, as they
risk unavoidable profanation by the rough handling of the
indifferent and the critical. Nor ought they to be embodied in any
publication except as hypotheses offered to the consideration of
the thinking portion of the public.

Theosophical truths, when they transcend a certain limit of
speculation, had better remain concealed from public view, for the
"evidence of things not seen" is no evidence save to him who sees,
hears, and senses it. It is not to be dragged outside the "Holy of
Holies," the temple of the impersonal divine Ego, or the
indwelling SELF. For, while every fact outside its
perception can, as we have shown, be, at best, only a relative
truth, a ray from the absolute truth can reflect itself only in the
pure mirror of its own flame - our highest SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS.
And how can the darkness (of illusion) comprehend the LIGHT that
shineth in it?